Follow the Bouncing Boob

There were times at Cousins Day when you could hardly keep track of the boob. You remember the boob, don't you? The prize my cousin Kathy came up with for the person who inadvertently discards a wild card while playing "65."

I think Peach won the award for getting it the most times in one day, I won the award for keeping it the shortest period of time, since I think my mother lost it to me on one round and got it back the next. We all, at one time or another, had the dubious distinction of owning the boob.

We have put the cap on Cousins Day #7 and are looking forward to #8, November 12 (in case you want to mark your calendars!)

It was Kathy's turn to bring drinks this time and she brought a drink her son told her about, UV Blue vodka (which is raspberry flavored), mixed with lemonade. She brought enough to supply an army.

It was beautiful (especially in my mother's blue-stemmed glasses) and it tasted yummy too. I should also assure everyone that we hardly made a dent in that gallon of liquid and left most of it behind for my mother to share with her stepson, who is coming to watch the football game tonight.

When we started Cousins Day, several months ago, we would leave my house to drive to my mother's somewhere between 10:30 and 11 a.m. Now Peach and Kathy are showing up earlier and earlier. We also used to have lunch and then play cards until 5, when we would break to fix drinks. I wonder what it says about us that our time to start drinking has changed to 3 p.m!

Perhaps that's why by 5 p.m. we were all holding our sides and groaning that our stomach muscles hurt from all the laughing. They say laughter is good therapy. If that's the case, there are no four more mentally healthy people in California than the four of us this afternoon!

It was my turn to bring dinner and I brought that fabulous lamb pizza that I made a few weeks ago. It was a big hit, as I hoped it would be, even with Peach, who hadn't admitted that she really doesn't like lamb.

In fact it was such a hit that we started talking about putting out a Cousins Day cookbook, saving the recipes for meals and drinks and some comments about various Cousins Days. When we have enough material collected, I'll put out a book from Lulu that anybody who is interested can order.

This mainly came about because the 2nd generation cousins are so jealous of our Cousins Day and starting to talk about having their own. We figured this could be a guidebook for them -- or anyone who wants to try something similar.

The Card Gods were good to me this Cousins Day and I won more than my usual number of games. Usually my role is to bring enough money to keep paying the others, who always win the damn game.

The object of the game is to get the lowest score. You play 13 hands in each game and the winner of each hand gets 20 cents. At the end of the 13 hands, the one with the lowest score overall gets the rest of the money. As you can see from the scorecard, I didn't do too badly for myself! (This was taken halfway thru one game, the first game I ultimately won.)

My mother is not a good loser.

Wouldn't you think that she'd be pleased to see her daughter, whom she proclaims to love so much finally win a hand or two? or three? But nooooooo.

We called it an early night (you don't think that starting drinking vodka drinks at 3 p.m. had anything to do with it, do you?) and all, except Kathy slept so soundly that only Kathy was awake to hear the cat fight that went on outside the living room window in the middle of the night, but my mother found tufts of cat fur on the porch in the morning!

We came home full of good food, good drinks, good camaraderie, and more good memories...and already counting the days until we get to do it all over again!

Mabel Finds A Home

Today Mabel found herself a "forever home."

When Ashley said that a couple wanted to come and look at her, I knew that they'd take her. The guy heads up the police K9 unit and they have a 9 year old border collie and it sounded like the perfect place for her.

We had the best night ever for our last night together. She went to sleep on my feet and slept until 6, when she crawled up to my chest and rolled over for tummy rubs. We lay like there for a long while. I was reluctant to actually get up (which would wake the other dogs) and was enjoying this quiet time with Mabel. But eventually she wanted to get down, so the day started.

I took some video of her, starting when I found her lying out in the sun with Sheila. Just hangin' out together, the two dogs. (Mabel has no concept of size).

What I didn't do was set up the camera to take a video of her first bath. Ho-hum who needs another puppy bath video? Her paws were dingy from so much time in the soft dirt but I decided I didn't need to film it. Wrong! Mabel is the first puppy to have discovered that to get OUT of the sink she could aim for the window sill. I had a real fight on my hands to keep her in the sink long enough to clean her feet and rinse the shampoo off of her. I was soaked by the time she was ready to get out of the sink. I'm sure it was a lot more fun watching than it was doing it, but, alas, I didn't think ahead.

She had a nice long nap and I thought I would have to wake her up, but when I got out of my office, she heard me and came running. I put her in my lap and just had a last quiet moment for about 10-15 minutes. Like all the puppies, we had bonded well and I fell in love with her, but I also know that I can't keep them no matter how much I love them. There was a loving family at Petco waiting to meet her.

I never did get the name of the people, but they asked all the right questions, she wagged her tail and licked them. Ashley suggested they take her over to a grassy area and talk it over, so they did. Walt and I sat at Petco and watched. Then I went inside to get treats for Sheila and Lizzie while the couple talked with Kim about business and the Mabel nuzzled up against the guy's neck.

Finally, it was time to tell her goodbye and leave her to her new family. I asked if they minded if I took their picture, which I did and Walt and I headed off to Safeway to do some shopping.
When we came home, the guy was there with Mabel on a leash. Mabel saw me and ran right over to me. I scooped her up, gave her one last hug and then put her down again and got into the car.

Another one come and gone. Another hole in my heart. There will be more.

Friends of My Youth

(The photo is from a Halloween party held at my house in about 1957. I'm second from the left, with the black top, looking up)

I was looking at the photo from the graduating class of 1956, the Photo of the Day for yesterday and for today, and remembering things about many of my fellow classmates.

Judy Lucchesi was my best friend. We had a friendly rivalry over Stephen Calegari, who was my neighbor. When I spent summers with my cousin Peach, Judy and I would write letters to each other ending with "he's MY boyfriend," each of us trying to make the "MY" bigger than the other's.

Janet Wilhelm's father was the manager of The Emporium, the huge department store downtown. They lived in Sausalito, which even then we a sleepy little artist's colony, but not the tourist trap that it has become today.

Eddie Garaventa was the class hunk. I once hosted a Halloween party, where my father made great decorations all throughout the house and we danced on the concrete back yard. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when Eddie asked me to dance because nobody had danced with me up to that point. But I didn't really know how to dance and all he said to me was "do you always step on people's feet?" and he left me before the end of the song. I was mortified. That's the only thing I remember about Eddie.

Marie Davilla's mother was our Brownie Scout leader. She was Japanese and Marie had been born in an internment camp at Tanforan race track (which, we joked, explained her love of horses). I remember that Marie could play "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the piano and we always begged her to play it. Her mother was the housekeeper for a big Victorian mansion, now torn down and replaced by an apartment building. It was all dark wood with a grand staircase. Probably not as grand as in my child's mind's eye, but whenever I read something that talks about a mansion, this is the place I envision. I remember the yard had tiny pink roses growing in it.

Mrs. Davilla did great activities with us, like baking cookies in the kitchen and making a recording of our voices on some machine that recorded us on 78 rpm records.

Marie, Vickie Handley and I were the three from that class who ended up at St. Vincent High School, where we did not really maintain our friendship.

When we got into Girl Scouts, Michele Cicerone's mother, along with Judy's mother, were our leaders. Michele's mother had some theatre background and so we put on variety shows every year. It seems like we rehearsed forever and performed at some little building in San Francisco. I went on vacation for a weekend with Michele's family one time and I remember her father hit a dog when we were driving home and I cried because he wouldn't stop for it. Michele and I were also obsessed with "Spin and Marty" on the Mickey Mouse Club.

Shows what the sign of the times was. I cringe to think what pain we must have caused her, but we all thought of Patty Leone as a "bad girl." She was non-Catholic, for one thing, she had red hair and freckles, and she had ... gasp! ... pierced ears! Only "bad" girls had their ears pierced.

Dominic Manzone's family must have been rich. Richer than mine, anyway. Whenever we had drives to raise money for the "pagan babies" in Africa, Dominic always contributed the most, so he always got the "good" prizes.

You still see trucks in San Francisco with "Servedei Service" (or something like that) on it. That was Sandy Servedei's family. They lived in the Marina, a block from the yacht harbor. Sandy was, I think, the shortest in the class, but very sweet.

Gayle Tarzia and I walked to school every day, since she just lived two blocks away. She was the one who first told me the plot of A Star Is Born and changed my life. I wrote about her earlier this year, on her birthday.

What I remember most about Eugene Sarlotte was that his baby brother had long curly hair that hung in ringlets much like my own did when I started kindergarten and his mother hadn't had the curls cut off even as he approached 5.

When you are with the same people every day for 8 years, it's very strange never to see them again...and it's kind of sad to think that, 50 years later, I have hardly seen a one of them since graduation, 1956.

(to see the full photo, with identification, check the original entry)

St. Brigid's Grammar School

That's My Answer's question to be answered today was whether or not your grammar school had a web site. I did a Google search and was surprised to find that St. Brigid School did, indeed, have a web site.

Not only did it have a web site, but it had an alumni page where it was asking for information from graduates. I sent mine to the e-mail address included.

Visiting the site did, of course, open a floodgate of memories.

The staff were members of The Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (or "BVMs" for short) and, of course, this was the day when all nuns wore habits. The BVMs had the box-like headgear, with heavy rosary beads hanging from the belt around their waist. The notion of a nun having any skin under all that black was incomprehensible. It seemed that they always carried clickers. We stood on clicks, we sat on clicks, we genuflected in church on clicks. I suspect that the idea of clicker training for dogs started by some person who went to Catholic grammar school!

I remember my very first day of school...or at least the first five minutes of it. I was starting a bit late because I was too young and after my best friend started Kindergarten, I was so sad, my mother got a special dispensation for me to go into the classroom too, so it was a few days after the start of school. The deal was that I would spend 2 years in Kindergarten, but apparently I was so good at coloring, they let me move into 1st grade with my classmates. I was always the youngest in the class (which became difficult when everyone reached puberty a year before I did).

I remember standing at the kindergarten room door, crying while Sister Mary St. Patrice was telling me how pretty my curls were as she gradually took me by the hand and led me to the playhouse in the room.

I don't really remember anything else about kindergarten at all, but that one moment when I stepped into the room, trying not to cry, is indelibly burned into my memory banks.

We got to wear whatever we wanted for kindergarten, but for the next 11 years, I would wear uniforms. August was always the month when we would head to Macy*s or The Emporium, or whichever store had the contract and get, in grammar school, the white middy blouse, the removable collar and cuffs, the navy blue tie, and the pleated navy blue skirt that I lived in 5 days a week. The boys had grey tweed slacks, white shirts and ties.

My memories of grammar school come in little chunks. We played games in the school yard -- "Lemonade," "Red Rover," and "Mother May I," for example. I participated sometime, but I was usually one of the last chosen for teams. I mostly remember sitting off in a corner reading.

I remember the day when a group of girls in my class all surrounded me and felt under my middy blouse to see if I had breasts yet, because they were all wearing bras already, but since I was a year younger, I was still flat chested. They laughed at lot.

(When I did get a bra, I was so jealous because Stephen would always snap my friend Judy's bra and never mine...we both had a crush on him.)

The school playground was next to the church, which was built of big stone blocks. Now there is a rectory between the yard and the church, but then there wasn't. I liked to stand at the church wall and flake off pieces of the stone with the tip of a bobbiepin. I would sometimes spend my entire recess period flaking pieces of stone off the side of the building.

I remember the school library. We had to have special permission to go to the library, because it was so small, but I was there as often as possible and read a lot of books about the lives of various saints and decided I wanted to be a Carmelite just like my heroine, Saint Teresa of Lisieux.

I remember hot chocolate and plain cake donuts in the cafeteria on Lenten mornings for those who went to early Mass, and that "cafeteria smell" that comes with institutions. I developed a hatred of canned green beans in that cafeteria!

The 7th and 8th grade girls had a special bathroom on the third floor of the building that the little kids weren't allowed to go in. I was always curious until I got old enough to realize that it had a Kotex dispensing machine in it.

Religious ceremonies were part of our life every day, whether things like "May processions" (where we crowned a statue of Mary with flowers) in the classroom, or a big deal in the church, like "40 Hours" devotions, and endless processions down the side aisle of the church (I nearly typed "theatre" -- same thing!) for various events.

I remember singing in the choir loft of the church. We sang Gregorian chant at Mass each Sunday, and read the words off of big plasticized cards. It was a tiny choir loft and we all crowded into a little space next to the big pipe organ.

I remember endless grammar drills in class. How I hated them ("b says buh-buh-buh," ... "s says sss-sss-sss"), and how I now appreciate them because of the excellent grammar foundation it gave me. We always knew that we had much better grammar skills than the poor non-Catholic kids in the nearby public school.

When I was in about the 7th grade our special project was to do a report on a state (I had California). It had to be in a booklet cut in the shape of the state and when all the reports were finished, we put them together into a big U.S. map on the bulletin board outside the classroom. They took a picture of us putting up the booklets. It was the year after I went on my first diet and I still remember Jimmy Whoel looking at the picture and saying "that can't be Bev. She's not fat enough."

I remember the preparation for receiving the sacrament of Confirmation and how we were expected to take "the pledge," promising not to drink alcohol until we were 21. I wonder how many of us kept that pledge (I didn't!).

I remember Christmas pageants in the little theatre in the basement of the church (which was also the place where we assembled to line up for processions).

I remember lining up on Sunday mornings for Mass, those who were having communion in one line and those who were not in another line. I had a taken a sip of water one morning, in the days when you couldn't even have water before receiving communion. I mistakenly got into the communion line and thought I was going to go to hell for not switching lines, but going to hell was far less frightening than having to admit to the nuns that I'd made a mistake and gotten in the wrong line!

Most of my classmates went on to Presentation High School. Only three of us went to St. Vincent, a decision I've never regretted, but I did lose track of everybody from my grammar school class, which is kind of sad.

---

Because I always believe in passing along good information to my readers, I offer this as a possible filler for a hole that has existed for a long time. If only I'd had one with me when I went to see whales with my friend Diane....

And to counteract that, this page has absolutely THE most beautiful photos from Africa that I have seen.

Stumbling Around

I feel like I need to offer a public apology to every person with whom I have ever communicated through my g-mail account! The lesson learned: read before pushing "OK."

Let me explain.

I discovered a little thing called "StumbleUpon," which is a cool little task bar you add to Firefox

When you push the "stumble" button on the left, it brings up some random web page based on interests you have indicated when you set the thing up. Really cool. I've already discovered some great web sites (a wonderful etymology site, for example) and some marvelous photos.

Without StumbleUpon, how would I ever have known that there is such a thing as chocolate sushi?

So I've been playing around with StumbleUpon for the past few days. When you find a page you like, you click the thumbs up symbol next to the word "Stumble" and it adds it to you favorites; when it gives you a page you don't like, you click the thumbs down symbol and it won't give you pages like that again (or so the theory goes).

But I hadn't checked out any of the other buttons and once I got used to how the whole concept worked, I decided to see "what else this thing does." I decided to check out the "friends" option.

Sounded interesting--it can check my g-mail address book to see how many people in my g-mail address book already have the StumbleUpon toolbar. Blythly, I handed over my password for it to check my g-mail account (I have since changed my password). It brought up 12 people in my address book who also have StumbleUpon and it asked me if I wanted to add them to my list of "friends."

Well, of course I did, so I clicked "yes."

What I neglected to notice was that below where I clicked "yes" was a list of all of the names in my address book (everybody on every list that I have ever heard from or written to in the past five years--some 150 names, most of whom I don't even know. It also included every group list I'm on.) and asking if StumbleUpon should send an invitation to all of those people. I noticed it a split second after I hit the "send" button and it seemed to be stalling, so as my eyes noticed what was actually happening, I immediately hit the stop button.

But we all know about that, right? There is no "stop" button on the Internet. Within seconds, I was receiving dozens of requests--from me--to join me on StumbleUpon. I spent the next half hour sending follow-up messages to lots of e-mail lists apologizing for spamming them.

So to everybody who got spammed by me today, I apologize ... (but you might want to check out StumbleUpon anyway. LOL)

If there is any upside to this incident, for me, was discovering a friend I'd lost touch with, whom I hadn't heard from for a year, and learning that she now has a blog. So it wasn't a total loss ... for me, anyway!

Blindsided

The dogs love jerky treats, which come in a nice plastic box and last about a month. I've only found this particular brand at Costco. The dogs are out of jerky treats and we need to stock up on meat, so I decided to drive to Vallejo and go to Costco.

I drove 20 miles to Costco and spent the rest of the afternoon at the Kaiser medical center in Davis.

Oh--it's not as bad as it sounds.

You might remember a few months ago when I got lost in Vallejo trying to find the freeway in the dark after leaving Costco. Today I took the wrong off-ramp and got turned around, in the daylight this time. At one point I was stopped at a long stoplight, took my glasses off to clean them, and the nosepiece snapped in two.


You need to know that the only reason I can find my glasses in the morning is that I put them in the same place each night. It's the ONLY bit of my life which is organized because I am blind as a bat without my glasses. Here I was at a busy intersection with glasses that were broken, 20 miles from home, and lost in Vallejo again.

I was trying to drive around Vallejo, one-handed, holding my glasses together over my nose.


I finally decided I could see cars, just not signs, so I took them off completely, figuring that two handed semi-blind driving was safer than one-handed driving. When I wasn't finding Costco, I decided I really needed my glasses so went to put them on again, but one half of them slipped out of my hand and I couldn't find the lens. I wore only one lens, fortunately the one for my "good eye."

I remembered that Costco has an optical department, if only I could get there. I finally got to Costco, miraculously, and tried to grope around to find the missing lens, which I finally did, on the floor of the back seat.

I stumbled into Costco's optometry counter crying "help!" feebly. Of course they had nothing there to help me, but they did have scotch tape and so they taped the glasses together. They didn't fit on my head right and because they didn't set right, my vision correction wasn't quite right, but at least I could see.

(I was also quite a fetching image.) I managed to do $200 worth of shopping, even half blind, and loaded it all in the car, putting the glasses on the front seat because the tape was starting to come apart and the glasses slipped off my nose every time I bent over to pick something up.

I drove directly from Costco to Kaiser, hoping that all the frozen foods and meat would not spoil in the car while I went in to see about my glasses. In the Ophthalmology department, they found out that I am 6 months overdue for an eye exam and they could fit me in two hours from then so I made an appointment.

On my way back to the car to drive home, look for my old glasses and unload the food, I noticed that there was nobody in the lab area and so I decided to pop in for a mammogram, this being October, which is mammogram month, of course. You have very odd conversations when strangers are manhandling your breast tissue like you would knead bread dough.

I drove home, unloaded (most of) the groceries from Costco--at least those which needed to be refrigerated or frozen -- and then got back into the car again to go back to Kaiser for my eye appointment.

The doctor discovered I needed a diabetic retinopathy check too, so he did that, I ordered 2 pairs of glasses (for the first time in my life getting prescription sunglasses, since they can't do transition lenses on my prescription), and came home to collapse.

Fortunately, I have my old glasses, so at least I have something to wear while I'm waiting for my new glasses!

(note the red on the bridge of my nose, which is what you get from wearing glasses held together with scotch tape all day!)

Food, Fido and Football

The photo is a 2-page spread in the local paper which lists all the eateries in Davis. 146 of them! Jeri didn't believe me, so I confessed that it was really only 145, because #146 (a fish place) hasn't opened yet.

I was so intrigued by this list that I actually made a database out of it so I could break it down by category (and also see how many we've actually visited).

We are a town of about 65,000 people. I would bet that the vast majority are WASPs (though, thankfully, we are seeing more diversity in town in the past few years). We obviously like our ethnic cuisine. We have sixteen Chinese restaurants. Since I like Chinese food, I have eaten in several of them (though there were some on the list I had never heard of) and thought all of them were quite good.

In contrast, there are six Mexican restaurants and I wouldn't give rave reviews to most of them (admittedly I have not eaten in one or two of them). There are also two locations for Dos Coyotes, which is Southwest/Mexican.

We have 11 fast food joints. McDonald's and Taco Bell each have one "real" establishment and one "lite" place, offering only a partial menu.

There are six Japanese restaurants and an additional four sushi restaurants.

Other ethnic restaurants include four Thai restaurants, three Vietnamese, one Afghani, one Czech, one Filipino, one English, one Korean, one French, one Greek, one German, one Indian, four Italian, one "Middle Eastern," one "Mediterranean," and one "International." Fourteen restaurants are listed as "American."

We have ten pizza parlors, five ice creameries, nine delis, and nine coffee houses (including 3 Starbucks and 2 Peets).

There are also sandwich bars, wine bars, and a couple of bakeries. Subway and Quizno's each have two locations. The list does not include the delis which are located inside supermarkets, except for the Davis Food Co-op. Nugget Market has a quite good one and I'm surprised it was omitted.

I checked off the restaurants that I have eaten in over the past 30 years and it is something like 58 of them, many of which are the fast food or coffee house restaurants. I obviously have a lot of exploring to do in my home town. I wonder if I can talk Walt into going out to dinner.....

Sheila and her "mini-me"!

No, Mabel didn't leave on Saturday, BTW. She's still here and doesn't seem terribly upset about it.

I have to admit that I'm not sad about it either. I didn't have a clue what had happened at placement on Saturday. I was supposed to pick her up at 4 p.m. and Walt pointed out to me that it was 3:58. At the time it was in the last 5 minutes of the UC Berkeley-Oregon State game that we had been glued to. Cal was leading by one touchdown. As I pulled up to Petco, Oregon had the ball on the 1 yard line with 50 seconds to go. I didn't even turn off the motor, but leaped out of the car, grabbed Mabel and yelled to someone that I'd talk with Ashley later. I got back in the car just in time to hear the controversial touchback that ultimately won Cal the game (and the #4 spot in the country).

So Mabel came "home" again and was one tired little puppy. She ate and slept most of the night, and again last night went to sleep in my hair (though she was gone by the time I woke up at 6).

She's now become quite adept at untying Walt's shoelaces.


Ashley says there were no takers on Saturday, and there will be no placement this week, so she may be here another two weeks. Ashley also says she might want me to bring her to Petco to meet a potential owner, so... who knows...?